Donald Trump made his newest pitch to minority voters by promising to invest in school choice.
The Republican nominee turned the issue into a matter of civil rights, claiming that the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton are too beholden to teacher unions and are a barrier to progress.
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“The Democratic Party has trapped millions of African-American and Hispanic youth in failing government schools that deny them the opportunity to join the ladder of American success.”
Trump on education: “I will call upon the American people to elect officials… who support school choice.” https://t.co/HnqRCIxdDS
— CNN (@CNN) September 8, 2016
According to the plan released by Trump’s team, $20 billion of existing federal dollars would be reprioritized from existing budget into a block grant for every impoverished school-aged child in the country.
States would also be asked to contribute an addition $110 billion of their own education budget to provide “$12,000 in school choice funds to every single K-12 student who today is living in poverty.”
Block grant money could then be used on whatever school the child is enrolled in: public, private, or charter.
That plan could run into some trouble with smaller states that have tinier education budgets, as well as big blue states like California and New York which would probably resist a push for more school choice.
Still, Trump intends to go full steam ahead with the plan to break up the “government-run education monopoly,” saying he plans on visiting all 50 states to promote the plan and would even campaign for state legislative candidates who backed it.
This will likely help Trump continue to increase his support among conservatives and Republicans, who love school choice, as well as black voters, who support vouchers 64 to 17 percent.
